New Research

Robot Arm with Human-like Muscular Skeleton Structure

Tools and machines in our society are designed for easy use of humans. For example, a door is designed for humans: if the knob of the door is located in front of your eyes, not at the waist height, you feel unease when you turn the knob. If the knob is placed at knee level, it is also difficult for a human to turn it. Easiness and difficulty of the movement is strongly related to the structure of the muscular skeletal mechanism of the human. If we can design a robot that has the same muscular skeletal structure as a human, it can easily turn the knob and open the door. The robot can easily handle many tools and machines designed for humans.

Adaptive Robotics Group (Hosoda Laboratory) has developed some humanoid robot arms and tried to investigate the roles of the human body, especially muscular skeletal structure. In the case of the door, it is not difficult for a human to change its position/orientation of its body with respect to the door, but can handle the change adaptively. The developed robot is demonstrated that it can handle the doors easily. This also shows having a human-like body is important to realize adaptive behavior in the human environment.